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Friday, June 5, 2020

Don’t Kid Yourself: Online Lectures Are Here to Stay - The New York Times

Many smart people are predicting that unpleasant experiences with online learning during the pandemic will slow or reverse trends toward remote instruction. Little wonder: Aging Luddites like me, struggling to transmit our thoughts over unstable internet connections, have not been compelling advertisements for change.

After our students were sent home in March, many of us taught the balance of the semester’s classes using Zoom, Canvas and other online resources. Few of us had any experience at this, and most of us weren’t very good at it. So it’s no surprise that, just as skeptics have observed, things didn’t always go smoothly.

Yet skepticism about remote instruction’s future may be premature. Mostly, that’s because those of us who struggled in today’s environment aren’t the ones likely to be delivering online courses in the future.

Consider this thought experiment. Which would you choose: An online course delivered by one of the world’s most knowledgeable and charismatic instructors, supported by Pixar-class animators, award-winning documentary filmmakers and a team of in-person graduate teaching assistants? Or the same course taught in person by an average instructor reading from yellowed notes?

Different students would of course choose differently. But there is ample reason to believe that experience with the first option would eventually lead a substantial proportion of students to prefer it, even if they were charged the same amount for either approach. But because of economies of scale, the remote option would enjoy a substantial cost advantage.

As Philip Cook and I wrote in our 1995 book, “The Winner-Take-All Society,” these are precisely the conditions that give rise to winner-take-all markets. As technology has expanded the reach of the most able performers, they have been capturing ever larger shares of worldwide markets across a host of domains.

The tax-advice industry, for example, was once served almost exclusively by local accountants. Then came H&R Block, which discovered that most returns could be completed by high school graduates with only occasional assistance from tax professionals. More recently, scores of tax software programs disrupted this market. But once reviewers anointed Intuit’s TurboTax as the most comprehensive and user-friendly software, it went on to capture more than two-thirds of the online tax preparation market.

Another signature feature of a winner-take-all market is the so-called Matthew Effect. The sociologist Robert Merton coined the term, referring to a verse in the Book of Matthew: “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” As a leading producer expands its market share, additional revenues enable it to further refine the offering that made it a leader. The revenue from its early lead helped Intuit add the ability to process state tax returns, which extended that lead.

Sometimes the Matthew Effect is a simple matter of a particular supplier’s becoming part of a product’s identity. Daisy Ridley is clearly a talented performer, but before the director J.J. Abrams cast her as Rey in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” hundreds of other candidates might have seemed equally promising. Once the film became a box-office bonanza, her lock on the role was virtually unbreakable .

The Matthew Effect and related positive-feedback processes have driven some of the biggest success stories of the internet era. Google dominates search because the more queries the company processes, the more effective its algorithms become. And despite criticism and competition, Facebook dominates social media because the more members a network has, the more useful it becomes as a place for people to interact.

Similar feedback effects are poised to reshape the market for academic instruction. The move to remote course offerings had been happening slowly, fueled in part by chronic budgetary shortfalls at many colleges and universities. But because the pandemic has greatly amplified those cost pressures, it will accelerate the transition. And although the average quality of remote instruction has been low, the sheer scale of recent efforts has sped the discovery of ways to improve it.

Like tax preparation software, a large number of remote courses will compete for reviewer and student approval during the early going. And similarly, a handful of contestants will eventually be judged as best.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

  • Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

    Updated June 5, 2020

    • How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

      The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

    • Will protests set off a second viral wave of coronavirus?

      Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

    • How do we start exercising again without hurting ourselves after months of lockdown?

      Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, “start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid,” says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. “When you haven’t been exercising, you lose muscle mass.” Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

    • My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

      States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

    • What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

      Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

    • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

      Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

    • How can I protect myself while flying?

      If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

    • Should I wear a mask?

      The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

    • What should I do if I feel sick?

      If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

Economies of scale are the driving force here. Most of the costs of delivering remote courses are fixed, which means that costs per student fall sharply with volume. The cost of producing a first-rate instructional video is the same, for example, no matter how many students view it. The only additional expense of expanding remote courses would be the hiring of local graduate teaching assistants.

As the leading remote offerings are more widely adopted, the additional revenues will fuel further improvements in quality. Over time, the most successful remote courses will enjoy a growing cost advantage, since their expense per student declines as more people use them.

Remote learning won’t replace the campus experience entirely. For one thing, academic instruction isn’t the only mission served by institutions of higher learning. Students go to college in part to broaden their social networks and acquire credentials that will help them in the labor market. Many schools will survive by continuing to meet these demands.

In addition, on-campus instruction will remain for many specialized courses that are too small to support superstar remote offerings. In short, the economic forces promoting remote instruction won’t spell the end of on-campus student life anytime soon.

But major shifts are in store, ones that will entail significant benefits and costs. As in earlier winner-take-all disruptions, technologies that allow the most able producers to serve broader markets will increase the total amount of economic prosperity available to be shared by all. Left unchecked, however, they will also spawn large increases in inequality.

Whether a greater reliance on remote instruction will be a net improvement will therefore depend heavily on public policy. In past disruptions, we have essentially ignored the injuries associated with rising inequality. Our experience during the pandemic highlights powerful reasons for reconsidering that strategy.

Social solidarity makes life better for rich and poor. And when the economic pie grows larger, it is necessarily possible to distribute it so that everyone gets a larger slice than before.

Robert H. Frank is an economics professor at Cornell University. Follow him on Twitter: @econnaturalist.

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Don’t Kid Yourself: Online Lectures Are Here to Stay - The New York Times
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